Wednesday, 13 June 2012

Joyous News from Oxford

Today we have the great pleasure of expressing our joy in the news that Mr Thomas Mason, a member of the Ordinariate Group in Oxford and friend of this group, has been accepted by the Ordinary for training and formation to the Catholic Priesthood, commencing in the Autumn.

Firstly we offer our hearty congratulations to him. But also we renew our thanksgiving to Almighty God for His continued blessings being poured out upon the Ordinariate and the Church in England, especially in sending new workers out into His vineyard in this year when the heart of the Curé d'Ars, universal patron of priests, visits these shores.

Thomas was received into Christ’s Church only last April, and serves as yet another potent reminder of the wonderful fruits that Anglicanorum Coetibus has brought in so little time. His commitment to the solemn and worthy celebration of the sacred liturgy has become the hallmark of those already ordained to serve in the Ordinariate. We think back with delight to the ordination of two other young former Anglicans, Frs Bradley and Lloyd, just a few months ago, and are renewed in our hope for the future of the Church in England.

Yet it is not only Thomas’s fidelity to the liturgical practices of the Church which gives us cause for joy. Like so many of the other young men presenting themselves for ordination, he is fiercely loyal to solid Catholic doctrine. This is the true fulfilment of the Oxford Movement in our age, which continues not to compromise with the prevailing dictatorship of relativism in modern British society, and continues to place the Gospel call to Christian Unity at the heart of its message. This is the vision of the founding fathers of Anglo-Catholicism, that we might do rather more than just referencing the inherited Truths of Catholicism, and that we might live them and try to share them with others.

Individuals who found themselves on the sure rock of Holy Mother Church will complete the conversion and restoration of England as Our Lady’s dowry. Here you will find the Truth, the faith of the Apostles. Here you find the Catholic faith cherished for the great gift that it is, not merely tolerated as one possible view among many.

We reaffirm, therefore, our commitment to pray for Thomas’s journey to ordination, asking the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, Bl John Henry, and S. Gregory the Great that he may grow in holiness and become conformed ever closer to the person of Christ the High Priest.

We know that Thomas is particularly keen on French organ and church music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To celebrate this news, we include some examples of the genre below, so that we might all rejoice together and ask for God's blessing upon him.

First, the Incantation pour un Jour Saint writted by Jean Langlais. This piece, at once mystical, symbolic and entirely vivid, is based on the Gregorian chant of the Lumen Christi, sung by the deacon on Holy Saturday, when during the Easter Vigil he processes into the darkened church with the Paschal Candle. How appropriate for a new Catholic that we focus on the Easter Vigil (and indeed, Thomas's last visit to St James's was for our own Easter Vigil, upon which we reported in this widely read blogpost).

Next, the Gloria from Vierne's extraordinary Messe Solenelle. Often thought of as a grand setting for grand days, or even as a concert piece, Vierne's work, while it does represent beautifully some of the French style of that period, was in fact one of the firm favourites of many French parish and cathedral choirs. This then sits in perfect harmony with the liturgical tradition that Thomas is so keen to maintain - the best can always be offered, even in the simplest of settings, there is no reason or cause to offer less. What makes this piece yet more suitable for today is that it was first sung for a mass on the Immaculate Conception in 1901, a feast so long honoured in England. That Widor played the grand orgue of St Sulpice that day with Vierne at the orgue de choeur adds a level of colour that any devotee of French music of that period will adore.

How else to conclude but with a Te Deum. This, a well known and much loved recording of the plainchant of the Te Deum (as we sang at St James's only two Sundays ago) interspersed in an alternatim setting with the immense power of Pierre Cochereau's playing of the grand orgue of Notre Dame in Paris.

Links to opportunities to donate to the Ordinariate, whether to support training of priests or any other Ordinariate spending, are provided on the top right hand side of this page.

Of course, the financial challenge is significant, but we have faith that the work of the Ordinariate and of the Catholic Church will not be hindered by the fundraising tasks ahead of us.

I suppose all these priests and ordinands could simply have stayed in the CofE, where they could have enjoyed financial stability, even if at the cost of sacrificing some principles. Thanks be to God that these brave and faithful men have not done so.

Blessed John Henry Newman on the hope for Reunion

… I gather up and bear in memory those familiar affectionate companions and counsellors, who in Oxford were given to me, one after another, to be my daily solace and relief; and all those others, of great name and high example, who were my thorough friends, and showed me true attachment in times long past….

And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with a hope against hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our union, may even now be brought at length, by the Power of the Divine Will, into One Fold and under One Shepherd.

Apologia pro Vita Sua

Blessed John Henry Newman's Prayer for Unity

O Lord Jesus Christ, who when Thou wast about to suffer didst pray for Thy disciples to the end of time that they might all be one, as Thou art in the Father and the Father in Thee, look down in pity on the manifold divisions among those who profess Thy faith and heal the many wounds which the pride of man and the craft of Satan have inflicted on Thy people.

Break down the walls of separation which divide one party and denomination of Christians from another. Look with compassion on the souls who have been born in one or other of these communions, which not Thou, but man, hath made.

Set free the prisoners from these unauthorised forms of worship, and bring them all to the one communion which Thou didst set up at the beginning – the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Teach all men that the See of Peter, the Holy Church of Rome, is the foundation, centre, and instrument of Unity. Open their hearts to the long forgotten truth that the Holy Father, the Pope, is Thy Vicar and representative; and that in obeying him in matters of religion they are obeying Thee, so that as there is but one company in heaven above, so likewise there may be one communion, confessing and glorifying Thy holy Name, here below. Amen

Fr Ignatius Harrison, the former Provost of the London Oratory, on Unity

Another of the Holy Father’s outstanding achievements is his inspiring work for Christian Unity in setting-up the Ordinariates for former Anglicans. What a brilliant way of cutting through the plethora of mealy-mouthed verbiage and foggy thinking that has characterized so much ecumenical activity in recent decades, verbiage and fogginess which may indeed have had the very best of intentions, but which nevertheless achieved so little in real terms.

Let us also pray with all our heart and mind and strength that our vitally important ecumenical journey with our Greek and Russian Orthodox brethren will continue apace, that our charitable and respectful dialogue with them will bear much fruit, so that the universal Church might once again breathe with two whole lungs, and so that soon there may be but one flock and one shepherd. Domine, ut sit!